


water takes you in

by vvelna



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, M/M, Mild Blood, mention of animal injury, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23326147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vvelna/pseuds/vvelna
Summary: Dan meets a mermaid.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32
Collections: phandomficfests: escape from reality





	water takes you in

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for @phandomficfests escape from reality fest day five: trope celebration
> 
> i also wrote it completely on whim starting at 3am when i had zero plans of writing anything for this fest. it's also unbeta'd so i take full responsibility for all its remaining flaws or questionable qualities
> 
> mermaids are a trope right

“If you let me go, I’ll grant you three wishes.”

Dan frowns. He’s not stupid. 

“That’s genies, not merpeople.”

“How would you know?” asks the merperson, floating on his back. He puts one hand behind his head and shoots a spurt of water up into the sky, easy as breathing, like he can just summon water from his lungs. Maybe he can. Dan has never met a merperson before.

“I bet you’ve never met a genie before,” he continues. “I bet you’ve never even met someone like me before.”

Dan hates that he knows. He hates to be ignorant, inexperienced. But no one in his village has encountered a merperson before; it’s not just him.

He stretches in the tank, light rippling off the scales on the lower half of his body. Dan’s eyes are drawn to the way the water rises and falls along his long, lean torso as he bobs in the water. His chest and stomach rising from the depths like a pale island, then sinking back beneath it. Dan looks away, blushing.

One of his arms is chained to the side of the tank, and his slender fingers tap out a tuneless rhythm on the glass.

“So, about those wishes,” Dan begins, deciding to humor him. “What kind of wishes can a merperson grant?”

Phil turns his head to face Dan and smiles, giving him a glimpse of his sharp, slightly crooked teeth.

“That depends on what you want, Dan. What do you desire?”

Dan looks down and away, trying to escape those luminous, unblinking blue eyes. And to hide the red blotchy skin of his face.

“Maybe don’t call me a merperson though. It sounds stupid. I’m not exactly a person. Even mermaid would be better, though that’s equally inaccurate. You humans really don’t have any good words for us.”

“Well, what do you call yourselves?”

He runs his free hand through the long black hair that flows around him like sea grass.

“Nothing. We don’t feel the need to classify our species.”

Dan sighs; he can’t tell if he’s being toyed with. At least if he is, no one else is there to see him be made a fool.

“What should I call you?”

“My name is Phil.”

Dan laughs sharply. “Phil? Really? So you’re not a person but your name is _Phil_. Sure.”

Phil smiles, lips closed this time. “I’s a nice name, isn’t it? Phil. Phil the mermaid.”

“I thought you said you weren’t—”

“No, it’s fine. I am, aren’t I? A mermaid.” He says it slowly, rolling the word around in his mouth and stretching the syllables. “Or a merman. A fishboy.”

Dan laughs again, smoother now. “ _Fishboy_.”

Phil pulls himself closer to the glass and lifts his head and shoulders up fully out of the water. He looks down at Dan.

“Do you like fishboys, Dan?”

“I like boys,” says Dan, only realizing what he’s said after the words have left his mouth. He’s never said that to _anyone_. He’s only recently been able to admit it to himself. Now he’s blabbed it to a complete stranger, a potentially dangerous creature from the deep, like it was nothing.

He doesn’t’ know what to say next, because he certainly can’t take the words back. His mouth hangs open but nothing escapes from it

If Phil is surprised or bothered by Dan’s confession, he doesn’t show it. He just watches him, eyes half-lidded, looking almost bored.

“I like fishboys, too,” he says finally, just after Dan’s managed to close his mouth properly. He lays back down in the water and stretches in a truly sinful way. He shoots more water out of his mouth, and Dan really wishes he wouldn’t.

“That’s nice,” says Dan, sounding like a complete idiot. That’s nice? _That’s nice?_

Phil laughs, and it’s a beautiful, musical sound. Dan thinks it must be the first genuine laugh he’s heard out of him.  
“You’re so cute,” he teases. “And pretty,” he adds, sounding almost impressed.

Dan’s reaction to this praise is, bizarrely, to shoot to his feet and begin pacing the room. His heart is racing and his palms are clammy. His face burns like a furnace. 

“Have you ever wanted to know how mermaids have sex?” Phil asks, in a voice one might use to discuss the upcoming weather.

Dan gasps—actually gasps out loud—like one of the high-strung elderly women at the church his grandmother forces him to attend. The ones who look about to faint at even the indication that a swear is about to be uttered.

Phil giggles. “Sorry, you’re just too fun to tease.”

Is that what it was, teasing? Dan stops pacing and stands with his back to Phil and the tank. 

“I need to...I need to get some air,” he says, hating how telling such an admission is. How obviously, unbearably flustered he is, even though Phil is just playing.

“Please don’t!”

The pitch and tremor in Phil’s voice turns Dan around.

Phil is sitting up, both hands gripping the edge of the tank.

“Please don’t leave me here alone. I’ll be nice, I promise.”

Phil is scared. Dan feels foolish for just realizing this. Behind the nonchalance, a desperate panic churns. Phil is, after all, chained up in a tank. He washed up on the shores of the village, unconscious, and was carried to this cabin. Dan isn’t even supposed to be here; he was told to stay away.

It’s cruel. Of course it’s cruel, and Dan hates that he didn’t see that immediately. He treated Phil like a spectacle, a curiosity. Not a living thing. A person, no matter what Phil says. 

“I’m going to let you go,” he says, once more speaking without thinking. 

“You are?” says Phil, his eyes bright as his glittering scales.

“Yes. But…I don’t know how.” He frowns, looking from Phil to the door, and thinking of the long walk from the cabin to the sea. “Even if I unchain you, you can’t exactly walk.”

“You’ll just have to carry me,” says Phil.

Phil is about the same size as Dan, and of a similar build from the waist up. If he had legs, Dan reckons they’d be about the same height. Which means that Phil’s weight probably isn’t too far off from Dan’s. Carrying him won’t be easy, if it’s even possible for Dan to do so farther than a few steps.

Phil must realize this, as his eyes sweep Dan’s not-exactly-muscular body.

“Can you find something to put me in? Like a cart?”

Dan starts to shake his head, but then he properly thinks. There’s a garden shed not far from the cabin, and unless it’s in use, there should be a wheelbarrow inside.

“Yes…yes. I’ve got something.”

“Well, go get it,” says Phil, a bit sharply. “Sorry. Please get it, so we can go before we both get in trouble.”

Dan hasn’t thought of that yet. He could get in a lot trouble for what he’s about to do. Most of the village is at the weekly meeting right now, and Dan should be too, but the amount of flack he’ll get for skipping out is nothing compared to the punishment he’d receive for letting the mermaid escape.

It won’t do to dwell on it. He’s made up his mind to help Phil. He can’t live with himself if he doesn’t.

“I’ll be right back.”

He races outside, heart pounding. It takes a moment for him to get his bearings, but luckily the street is empty, and no one is there to see him. He remembers which direction the shed is and takes off running. 

When he throws open the door and sees the wheelbarrow waiting, he says a silent prayer of thanks. Then he springs back into action, pulling it free, wincing at the sound of tools and flowerpots shifting and tumbling against each other.

When he bursts through the door of the cabin, Phil woops with joy and spits a stream of water up so high it splashes the ceiling. Dan feels giddy with excitement and fear. This is the most thrilling thing he’s ever experienced.

He pushes the wheelbarrow toward the tank and bends to examine Phil’s restraint. A tight metal cuff circles his wrist, a short length of heavy chain fixing it to a metal ring on the wall of the tank. The metal is rusty and stains his fingers red when he touches it.

“Is there a key or something?” asks Phil, looking at Dan like he knows what he’s doing.

There must be a key, but Dan has no idea where it is. Most likely his father has it hanging from his belt loop or tucked safely away in a jacket pocket. Him or one of the other men who’d carried Phil up from the beach. Wherever it is, there’s no way Dan can get his hands on it. He’ll have to go about this a different way.

“I’ll be right back," he says again.

“Wait!” cries Phil, but Dan doesn’t stop. He races back to the shed and digs around inside, thoughts pounding in his head in time to his pulse.

He unearths a heavy mallet. He holds it in both hands, rolling the handle, gauging the weight of it. He wishes it were more substantial, but it’ll have to do.

Back in the cabin, Phil looks about ready to flop out of the tank, hand be damned. Dan thinks of animals caught in snares who chew their own legs off to escape. He once found a fox foot in a trap and it turned his stomach so badly he refused to help check the traps anymore, though he still ate the meat and wore the furs in winter.

Dan approaches with the mallet. Phil eyes it and swallows. 

“Can you back away from the side a bit? Just to pull the chain taut and so I don’t…uh. Smash your hand.”

Phil pulls back. Dan takes a deep breath and does a few practice swings. 

“Okay. Now or never. It’s fine,” he mumbles to himself.

He brings the mallet down hard on the chain and the rusty links pop apart. 

“It worked!” he cries, shocked by his own success.

Phil reaches for him, and Dan jolts and drops the mallet to the floor. Phil wraps his wet arms around Dan’s shoulders, the metal cuff still on his wrist scratching the back of his neck.

“Good job, Dan,” he says, smiling. “Now please help me out of here.”

It’s a bit awkward to figure out, but Dan manages to get his arms around Phil and lift him enough that he can slide out of the tank and into the wheelbarrow. The wet fabric of his shirt clings to him where Phil’s chest was pressed to his.

“How long can you be out of the water?” he asks, panting from the exertion. He looks down at Phil’s heavy tail. He wants to run his hand over the scales, to feel if they’re smooth in one direction and rough in the other, or the same both ways. It’s the worst possible time to have a thought like that.

“I don’t know,” says Phil. “I’ve never been out of the water for a long time before.” He shivers.

“We’d better hurry then. Hold on.”

Phil grips the sides of the wheelbarrow and twitches the fins at the end of his tail. Dan pushes forward, using all his strength to move and guide the wheelbarrow. It’s hard to steer with Phil inside, his weight unevenly distributed and half of him hanging out. But Dan has never been so determined to do anything in his life. He keeps the wheelbarrow upright and moving.

It’s a bit easier once they reach the downward slope toward the beach. Well, easier to move swiftly, but harder to control. Phil shrieks as they fly down the embankment. Right before they hit the beach, Dan trips and the wheelbarrow slips away from him, crashing and throwing Phil out onto the sand. Dan jumps to his feet. He’s banged his nose on something, and blood drips down, forming little dark pockets in the sand.

“Phil! Are you okay?”

Phil groans, lifting his head. His hair is matted with sand, but he seems alright. They’re still at least ten meters from the water though.

“Are _you_ okay?” 

Dan pinches his nose with one hand and wipes at the blood with the other. “I’m fine, but we need to hurry.”

He gets behind Phil, holding him under the arms, and starts to walk backward toward the sea, dragging him along. Phil pushes his tail up and down against the sand, trying to help move them along.

When the water hits Dan’s heels, he sighs with relief. They’re almost there. And just in time, because he can hear voices getting louder. The meeting is over. They’re not coming toward the beach, but some of them are surely headed to the cabin, where they’ll discover Phil’s absence.

The water slides up and around Phil and suddenly he’s broken free from Dan’s hold. The tide pulls back and carries him with it. Dan spins around and watches as Phil swims further out, moving in the water like no human can, the waves parting easily for him.

“Thank you, Dan!” he calls, waving at him before sinking fully below the water.

A lump forms in Dan’s throat. That’s it then. Phil is gone. He didn’t know what he expected. Of course Phil wasn’t going to hang around. But maybe some small, childish part of Dan was hoping he would. And perhaps an even sillier part had hoped Phil would ask Dan to join him. 

He turns away from the sea and slogs up the beach.

Lying to his father and the others isn’t so hard. He tells them the mermaid broke free with its own strength and attacked him before escaping. His bloody nose lends credence to the tale. None of them have ever seen a mermaid before Phil, so who are they to say that he couldn’t get back to the sea on his own?

So Dan gets in trouble for skipping the meeting and disobeying the order to stay away from Phil, but no one guesses the part he played in Phil’s escape. No one notices the overturned wheelbarrow down where the tall grass meets the sand either. And that night Dan sneaks out and stealthily rolls it back home.

Two weeks pass. Dan thinks about Phil all the time. He dreams about him. Daydreams. Fantasizes. The tedium of his life has never been so apparent. Is this really all there is for him? An apprenticeship with his father in a profession he hates, and a dismal career to follow? Dates with women who are perfectly fine people but will never appeal to him in the way they should? He’s only eighteen, but he can envision the whole bleak course of his life spread out before him like a scroll unfurled, rolling until it finishes at his death.

He can’t sleep. He rises from his bed on the floor, tiptoeing so as not to wake his parents or brother, and leaves his cabin.

The moon is high in the sky and almost full. Its light on the dark water is beautiful, like glowing white feathers dropped from some magnificent bird soaring overhead. He walks down to the shore and heads to his favorite jetty. He’s climbed up and walked along these rocks many times before, and his bare feet never falter or miss a foothold. He walks out to the very end of the jetty and sits down. The wind curls around him, the salt air fills his lungs, and the deep night embraces him like nothing else can. He closes his eyes.

“Hi, Dan.”

Dan screams and scrambles on the rock, nearly falling into the sea. Hands reach out to steady him. He pulls back and clutches his chest, wild eyes focusing on the person in front of him. 

It’s Phil. He leans on the rock, chin resting on his folded arms. He laughs, pink tongue sliding past his teeth.

“Phil!”

Dan heart bursts and blooms in his chest. He prays he’s not dreaming again, and that this is really Phil. It must be, because never in his dreams does every part of him feel so alive, all of his senses assaulted by the elements. And Phil never scares him like that, nearly sending him to the sea.

“I missed you,” says Phil, heartfelt and eager. Dan’s heart flips.

“I missed you too,” he whispers.

“I know we barely know each other, but there’s something special about you, Dan. I can tell.”

“Special how?”

Phil cocks his head to the side and traces Dan with his eyes. “I don’t know. But I feel strange when I think about you. And when I look at you. My friends made fun of me, but I knew I had to see you again.”

“Yeah,” says Dan, nodding enthusiastically. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Good,” says Phil and he pulls himself up further out of the water, laying down on his back with only the end of his tail submerged. “Look at the stars with me, Dan. Please.”

Dan lies down beside Phil and stares up at the sky. The stars have never looked so beautiful. Maybe that’s a silly thought. Dan has always been a bit of a romantic. But just because it’s silly doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

He turns his head to look at Phil and blushes when their eyes meet, because Phil is already looking at him. Through silent agreement they both shift closer at the same time. When their lips meet Dan is amazed at how warm Phil’s mouth is, the rest of him being so wet and cold. And he can’t believe he’s having his first kiss with a mermaid. With a boy.

Phil props himself up on one arm and looks down at Dan. Dan wonders if he looks as dazed as he feels. He thinks he’d pass out if he tried to sit up.

“The sun will be rising soon,” says Phil, “so I need to leave before any of your people see me.”

Dan’s heart clenches.

“But if it’s alright with you…I want to come back. Again and again. if you’ll meet me.”

Dan sits up and doesn’t fall. “Yes, absolutely. Every night, if you want.”

Phil giggles and plays with the long strands of his wet hair. “You really do like fishboys.”

“I like this fishboy.” He leans in and kisses Phil again.

The sun’s orange light begins its rise up out of the sea, like a fire lit in the night. Up in the village, some people are already rising to begins the day’s labor.

Phil squeezes Dan’s hand and kisses him on the cheek.

“See you later, Dan.”

He slides of the rock and disappears into the water. Dan hates to see him go, but this time not as much. 

Phil’s tail rises out of the water, waving at Dan. The new light dances on the edges of his fins. He’s getting farther away, but he’s still just close enough that Dan can see a fountain of water jet up into the air.

Dan waits until there’s no trace of Phil on the horizon before he rises, stretching out his cramped limbs. He’s got a long, tedious day ahead of him. But if he’s lucky, he’ll have a good night.

And maybe—just maybe—someday he’ll walk away from the village to go see Phil, and he won’t come back.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> [ reblog on tumblr ](https://velvetnautilus.tumblr.com/private/613641694977638400/tumblr_qRKI5zNNlzeuubzQd)


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